1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an input position setting method, an input position setting device, an input position setting program and an information input system, by which a position input by an operator can be set on a display area.
2. Related Art
In a graphical user interface of information devices, an acquisition of position information instructed by an operator is very important. In order to achieve such a purpose, for example, an exclusive input section such as a mouse and a tablet is generally used. The exclusive input section includes a data glove and the like. However, such an input section may limit a using environment thereof.
For example, the mouse, the tablet, or the like requires a place for its installation and operation. In addition, the correspondence between the movement and the input position information is indirect. That is, it is necessary to move the mouse or the input pen on a different place while looking up a pointer or the like displayed on the image. In addition, it is necessary to mount the data glove for every input and further the correspondence between the operation and the input position information is indirect as in the mouse and tablet.
Similar to the input section, when the correspondence between the input position information and the operation is indirect, it is necessary to be skilled in inputting the position information. Accordingly, it is difficult to apply such an input section to an information device used by unspecified individuals.
In comparison, a touch panel has a directive correspondence between input position information and an operation. The operation of the touch panel is intuitive and, for example, the touch panel can be widely used in ticket-vending machines for transport facilities and dispense and payment systems for banking facilities, which are used by the unspecified individuals.
However, the touch panel requires a panel having the same size as the input range. When a large input range is required, the production itself of the touch panel having the corresponding size may be difficult and causes extremely high cost.
In order to solve the problems, there is disclosed a technique for acquiring input position information by recognizing an operator's hand or the like on the basis of the pickup image data obtained by picking up an image above a display area which is displayed with an image display device, and detecting the position input by the operator on the basis of the recognition result (for example, see JP-A-9-102046 and JP-A-2000-331170).
The technique disclosed in JP-A-9-102046 discriminates the hand part from the Input images by the use of the features of the hand, thereby recognizing a direction and a form of the hand. In addition, the technique disclosed in JP-A-2000-331170 selects the optimum image by using a plurality of cameras and estimates the motion of the hand, thereby more precisely recognizing the direction and the form of the hand.
The techniques disclosed in JP-A-9-102046 and JP-A-2000-331170 are convenient in that the exclusive input section specially prepared such as a mouse, a tablet, and a data glove is not required. Therefore, these techniques solve some of the above-described problems occurring in the past. However, the techniques still have some common problems.
One problem is that mis-recognition in the recognition process or recognizing the hand is inevitable. It is a general problem in the recognition technologies that the high recognition rate can be obtained in a specially prepared environment such as a laboratory, but the recognition rate decreases in the actual using environment due to various disturbances.
Another problem is that there has not been made the consideration for allowing the operator to understand reasons for the mis-recognition. When the operator well understands a configuration of the system, a reason for a malfunction of the system is often understood at once. However, when the operator is one of the unspecified individuals, it may be not possible for the operator to understand the reason. Accordingly, the system giving an operation not intended by the operator becomes extremely difficult to be used.
In addition, in the techniques disclosed in JP-A-9-102046 and JP-A-2000-331170, there has not been considered at all a case where a plurality of operators use such a kind of information input systems at the same time. This is a principal reason for the malfunction under an actual using environment. That is, when a plurality of operators try to use the information input system at the same time which is only supposed for one operator to use at one time, the system cannot appropriately recognize the instruction operation performed by the plurality of operators, and thus the possibility of malfunction is high.
However, in many cases, the unspecified individuals do not understand that the system has such a limit, so that they can not understand the reason for the not normally operated system.
In addition, for example, a recognition device for recognizing the hand recognizes the hand part according to a color or a form. When there is a material having the same form or color as the hand, the device may mis-recognize the material as the hand. However, the unspecified individuals do not possibly understand such an algorithm and cannot understand why the system does such an erroneous operation.